


Adam/Life/Happiness

by bluebells



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Dark, Fusion - Tangled, M/M, Multi, Non-consensual themes, Sibling Incest, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-29
Updated: 2012-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam learns that he was abducted from the Winchester's royal family as a child, but his adoptive family don't take kindly to the confrontation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adam/Life/Happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyknightanka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightanka/gifts).



> This got completely out of control. Peas and rice. Although ladyknightanka requested a fusion commentfic with Disney's _Tangled_ (where Adam has wings rather than long hair), this spiralled much further down the traditional Grimm route and ended up with flavours of a twisted Cinderella, but I promise that title is not a lie.
> 
> For the purposes of this story, Azazel's son from canon is the demon from 7x15 (fandom dubbed 'Baalberith') for no other reason than funsies and to extend the philosophy that "we don't do 'no'". And yes, that fic title is inspired by a running tumblr joke of the true Adam OT3. I apologise for the incoherent warnings: it's late, I'm confused.

“You think I'm the bad guy? All right.”

Adam shrinks back, heart thundering in his chest as his father straightens on the stairwell to Adam's tower. 

Azazel's eyes gleam in the low light like dirty, molten gold. Adam's hands grip the drapes hanging over his door. He's never seen that darkness in his father's face before. Azazel has never spoken to him with such coldness even when he stood between Adam and that world beyond the tower's window.

“Father....” Adam considers an apology for his accusation, but new fear closes his throat. 

He can't take it back and Azazel doesn't deny it.

Adam was stolen by this man as a child, but he's never thought of Azazel as anything less than his father.

He's never feared his father until now.

Maybe Michael was right, after all. He told Adam the legends of this valley Adam was raised in. Chilling stories that explained why nobody ever wandered towards the waterfall and Adam had never seen another living soul until Michael stormed the tower for shelter, not realising it was already occupied.

It was only a week, but it felt like a lifetime ago that he bullied Michael into an adventure before his family returned. The best... and worst week of his life.

Watching Michael sail away into the fog without a backwards glance had almost crushed him. 

Adam can barely feel that pain beneath the anxiety tightening in his chest as his father slowly climbs the stairwell.

“Father, wait.” Meg ascends behind their father. She holds up her hand, glancing back at Adam, and Azazel stalls, though his eyes never leave Adam's face. Any hope that his sister will aid him fades when her eyes blink to black ink. “Let us take care of this.”

The wooden planks creak behind Adam. He stumbles against the rail when his brother reaches past him to push the drapes aside the rest of the way. His cold smile and same dark eyes make Adam shudder, and he starts to shake his head.

“Baal, please....”

_Not you, too._

His brother, Baalberith, Azazel's eldest son, raises a finger to his lips. His smile grows, pale as snow, and Adam's plea dies in his throat.

“I think,” Meg murmurs, head tilted at him curiously, “our baby brother's forgotten who his real family is. Who really cares about him.”

They're not his real family. Michael didn't even realise what he was doing when he showed Adam the kingdom of Adam's _true_ kin still mourning the loss of their youngest son eighteen years later, but Adam couldn't connect the dots until Michael was no longer so close to becoming his entire world. Adam has another family outside of this tower who still want and miss him, but he doesn't dare utter a word of it when Baalberith is looking at him like he's a piece of game on a spit.

“Don't break him,” Adam finally hears Azazel say as he turns for the foot of the stairs, and his next words sink Adam's heart like a stone. “We still need his halo.”

And then Adam is shoved back into his tower and the heavy wooden door slams shut behind them.

He backs into Baalberith's chest as Meg crowds into his space with a mad, glittering smile. Adam's hand flies to the delicate glass halo hanging from his neck. 

“Meg, please --” _You're my sister_ , Adam almost says, except she never was, and that word has never held more meaning for them than for Adam to understand she was one of three people who would feed Adam, groom his wings, and occasionally pluck a feather just to watch Adam squirm in pain before soothing the ache with a light touch.

“All those years I had to watch those white wings of yours,” Baalberith says over Adam's shoulder, and his fingers dig in, closing around the root of thick feathers. “We had to keep you so, so pretty to barter with your feathers, Adam.” Adam flinches at the sharp pain and hears Baalberith breathe him in deeply. “But now we've bought all the favours we need. We can finally stain you.”

Adam trembles at the look in Baalberith's face when he glances at him: hungry and impatient. Vicious. Adam's hands clench by his sides, itching for the frying pan that saw him through so much of his journey. His frying pan to Michael's sword. It felt like a faraway dream.

“Black or blood?” Meg asks Baalberith.

Her white grin sharpens, and Adam shivers at their mutual echo, “Black.”

“But Father said --” His wings, his halo, they couldn't break him, Adam thinks desperately. He despairs that 'Father' still rolls so easily off his tongue; it sours like poison.

“You were so small when he brought you to us,” Baalberith interrupts, pinching the arch of his wing with a fond voice. “We thought he intended for young Samuel, but the gift had been passed to you instead. John Winchester's third born with the angel's touch: feathers' brush that cured any illness... the halo that would shield us from every hunter.”

Baalberith's fingers gently tangle in Adam's hair, and Adam remembers when Michael touched him the same way. Adam's cheeks flush in shame that now his brother has tainted the memory.

“We had to keep you safe,” Meg coos, and Adam knocks away the hands she cups around his face. 

“And keep you clean,” Baalberith notes with scorn, like he's relieved that chapter of his life is finally over. “If we're leaving this valley, you can finally get dirty, Adam.”

Adam tries to meet his eyes to understand what is meant by that, but he knows it isn't anything good, feeling Baalberith's hands knot painfully in his wings.

“You belong with us. We don't have to hide you anymore.” A dark tear trickles from Meg's eye, and Adam turns his head away when she smears it across his cheek, smarting like a burn.

“I'm not going with you anywhere,” Adam says, voice trembling. A shock crumbles him to his knees, his wings throb and a strange smell fills his senses, like cotton and hay singing under the high sun. Is that what burning feathers smells like? “I won't be like you.”

He's seen the blood on their hands and smelled the bodies that burned in the pit below the tower, and never asked why. His family told him all those people had been trying to hurt Adam because they wanted his power. He had let himself believe it. He had loved them for always keeping him safe.

He wasn't lying to Michael when he told the hunter and thief that he was the first living soul Adam had met aside from his family.

Adam let them kill for him. Was he really any better?

“We love you, Adam,” Baalberith promises, nuzzling his cheek to his neck, inciting a shudder Adam can't hold back. “We thought you loved us, too.”

Meg kisses Adam kneeling at the foot of the bed. She tastes like soil, like the ground powder of stone and sand, and lingers foul on his tongue like rotten eggs. Nausea rolls in his stomach, but she just laughs when he gags, pulling back.

“The top feathers,” Meg agrees when Adam feels their brother tug questioningly at his wing and the feathers Adam learned to correct his flight. “After your week, you won't need those anymore.”

“No!” Adam's heart leaps to his throat and he whirls, but Baalberith catches him, forces his head down. His wings beat against his back, but they throb at every flex and Baalberith is immovable in spite of their thump. 

“Be careful. You'll hurt yourself.” Baalberith fondly knocks him upside the head, an assurance that he doesn't have to be gentle with Adam while he's unbroken.

Meg's iron grip closes over his joints at the back and Adam cries out in pain.

They smear their oily black ash into his skin and the folds of his wings until his eyes are heavy with it and he can't lift the sodden, aching weight of his feathers. Their filthy hands tug through his hair and they tell him how much they love him, how _they_ won't ever leave him, until the pained sob finally breaks past his lips and Adam confesses the words they want to hear. 

Only then do their hands stop. They tilt his head up and kiss him, so proud, and let the black smoke roll down his throat.

-*-

A heavy dread stirs in the pit of Michael's stomach when the tall, black steed charges through the hanging vines and he sees the imposing tower of Adam's home beneath that waterfall.

The first time he came here, the hush of the water's mist was a welcome herald to refuge. He's done a good job stifling the panic he felt once he realised who set him up to be hung, but what if he was wrong? What if that demon had taken Adam somewhere else? They had a day's lead on Michael.

“Thank you, baby,” he murmurs to the horse, leaping from its back with a pat to its neck.

The tower seems so much taller than it did that first time he scaled it in haste. They _have_ to be here, because if they're not... then there's no chance. 

Michael unsheathes his knives and stabs into the mortar. The climb is slippery and his grip is nervous, but the distance swells between him and the ground in no time at all. The proud, black horse of Winchester's guard whinnies at him from the lawns, and Michael can't help but think it sounds distressed when he finally slings his weight over the wooden sill.

The tower room is dark. Michael pants as he catches his breath, squinting into the shadows. He tightens his grip on the daggers and eases carefully into the room, wooden planks creaking beneath his boots.

“Adam?” He calls carefully, ears listening for the slightest movement. It shouldn't be this dark. He remembers when he first tumbled in and the room was flooded in light, but now the sun has been shut out. Michael proceeds uneasily. “Adam, are you here?”

He knows it's foolish to linger in the only shaft of light, but then he hears the sound up ahead – the brush of cloth on the floor; or feathers. 

He shifts the dagger behind his back. “Adam?”

A weak answer drifts from the dark. “... Michael?”

Relief washes through him and he rushes forward, slips on something smooth – familiar glimmer of... feathers? And then he trips over the first body. Michael lands with a grunt, barely breaking his fall, but his hands connect with a second body – cold and rigid. With their forms between him and the light, he recognises them in sudden horror: the grinning duo who wrestled him down on the kingdom's shore and tied him to the mast of that boat.

He curses and shoves himself away, whirling in the shadows. They gape back at him with black, unseeing eyes, expressions frozen in surprise. 

“ _Adam?_ Where are you?”

“Michael, run!” 

_Run?_ Adam's panicked warning only has a second to register before the hot, white pain strikes Michael between the ribs, forcing the air from him in a gasp.

“You again,” an old voice says in bemusement.

He staggers away, stunned, and looks into the face of the man who could only be Adam's abductor. The dagger in his hand drips with Michael's blood, and his eyes glimmer yellow in the low light.

How did Adam ever think this man was anything but wicked?

Azazel shakes his head and gestures with the bloody knife to the bodies at their feet. “You see this? All of this is on you. You come into _my_ house and take _my boy_ on a joyride. Then when I come to bring him back where he belongs, he kills the very people who would love him. Keep him safe.”

Michael falls to his knees in the strewn feathers, his head spinning. Why are there so many feathers? He presses hands to the wound at his side, grunting against the burn and throb, but he knows it's bad. 

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” Adam is sobbing softly, but Michael doesn't know who he's apologising to.

Azazel laughs brightly and gestures to Michael like he's just welcomed home the prodigal son. “I wish you'd come sooner! I always knew my boy had it in him. He just needed the inspiration. So, thank you, son. For playing your part." Azazel pats Michael's shoulder amiably, his heavy touch exaggerated with gratitude. "And now we have to leave before all the king's horses and all the king's men come down on us again. Come on, Adam.”

“No,” Adam says, somewhere from the dark. Michael hears the clink and drag of chains.

That is not the answer Azazel is ready to hear and there's a deathly pause before his quiet voice prompts, “No? Adam, we don't do 'no'.”

“Father, please, I'll come with you,” Adam begs. “I'll go anywhere you want and you can use my halo. You can sell my wings. I'll do everything you say and I'll never fight you... if you let me heal him.”

“ _If?_ ”

“I love you, Father. Please just let me heal him and we can be together, like you always wanted.”

Azazel scoffs a laugh and spins the dagger in his hand, smirking at his son beyond Michael's sight. “I don't need your love, boy. Only your obedience.”

“I'll never try to leave again,” Adam promises, and everything in Michael rails against the desperation in his voice. Adam can't do this for him. Michael doesn't want him to ever stop fighting; he's seen the fire and his ability on the road. Michael can't let Adam stay with this fallen angel. It would kill Adam.

“Adam, don't--”

Azazel whips back to him and Michael finds his voice suddenly gone.

“Shh. Can't you see my son and I are having a conversation? Do you know how rare that is with teenagers?” 

Michael tries unsuccessfully to protest, to shout and lunge at Azazel, but a strange power keeps him on his knees as Azazel turns back to his son with a patient smile.

_No, no, Adam don't--_

“I swear,” Adam says.

Azazel snaps his fingers and the crumble of chains echoes in the dark tower. “What the hell, kid? I want you to remember I did you this last favour the next time you think about running from another demon, you hear me?”

“... Yes, Sir.”

Warm, gritty hands encircle Michael's arms and a familiar silhouette swims in his vision. Although the wings drag low at his back, Michael would still recognise Adam anywhere. 

“Michael. Oh, Michael, I'm so sorry.” Adam curls around him and lets them sink to the floor. 

Michael grunts with pain to brace against his wound, finding his voice returned. He clutches back at Adam's hands that are busying with his wings, trying to find the right feathers. He almost loses his grip, Adam's skin is covered in a thick grime that leaves his fingertips tingling.

“Just hold on, all right? They took so many, I just have to --”

“Adam.” Michael stops him, and Adam's hands are shaking. “Adam, it's all right. You need... to know. I didn't leave you. I'd never leave you.”

He coughs, the sound comes up wet, and Adam's strangled response is suspiciously wet for its own reasons. 

“I know,” Adam whispers, and it's more than they've admitted in the last four days they've travelled together. 

Michael smiles, even as he feels his heavy lungs protest the air he tries to drag in. He was almost too late. He tugs on Adam's wrists. “Come here.”

Adam relents, moving into the embrace. Close enough for Michael to reach up at the last moment and snap the circlet of Adam's halo hanging from his neck.

The tower erupts in blinding light as Adam's grace fills the room. Michael feels Adam's gasp of shock because he can't hear anything above the piercing, toneless song of that otherworldly energy, and Azazel's rage of, _“What have you done?”_

Michael's vision is already threading black around the edges when the Heavens open, the protection of Adam's halo stripped away. He wonders what the brand of Azazel's evil must look like from on high, maybe a golden beacon in the night like the sickly yellow of his eyes? 

The ground is shaking beneath them and Adam shields Michael with his body as Azazel burns in holy light.

The last thing he hears is that angelsong filling every fibre of his being until he feels buoyant within it, feeling Adam's arms tighten around him, the smell of cinders gusting away, and Adam's wings closing over them both to envelope them in a darkness that draws Michael down and down....

Later, he won't remember the gaunt man in the strange, black clothes who regarded Michael down his nose, though Michael stood the taller of them both.

“You're the lucky one,” the man says and taps Michael on the forehead with the end of his cane.

Tipping him right back into Adam's arms.

The afternoon sun streams in above them. Michael blinks up at the blurry head of blonde hair and blue, shining eyes, too disoriented for a moment to understand what he sees.

“Wha--?”

Adam smothers his confusion in a hug, tears smearing against Michael's cheek.

“Michael! Michael, Michael... thank God,” Adam cries in relief and the first thing Michael notices when he lifts himself to wrap his arms around Adam's shoulders is that his wings are gone.

His wings are gone... with the grime on his skin and the bodies in the tower, and Azazel....

Michael sucks in a sharp breath and looks back to where the demon had stood, but not even a stain remains of Adam's abductor. 

“It's okay,” Adam says, sensing his tension, glancing the same way. “He's gone. They're all gone.”

Michael stares up into Adam's face and that beautiful, tearful smile. He tugs Adam's hands against his chest, clutching those long fingers that kept him so entranced by the fires at night. Michael's really here. He's.... “Adam?”

_How am I alive?_

“You saved us,” Adam whispers, and then Michael realises the truth when he sees the burn of Adam's once halo around his collarbone.

“You saved _me_ ,” Michael says intently. He doesn't look away so Adam will understand for all the times he means those words. When Adam swallows, looking down at their linked hands, Michael thinks he finally does.

A small smile twitches on Adam's lips. “I did, didn't I?” Then Adam closes the distance, and their first kiss is a gentle press of gratitude and relief. Adam is still trembling when he pulls back to whisper against Michael's lips, “You saved me, too.”

And Michael laughs, because he doesn't have the strength for tears, and their next kiss is not so gentle; it is hunger and joy. It is life.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Livejournal.](http://users.livejournal.com/_bluebells/66794.html)


End file.
